Georgina Lawton on growing up Black in a white family

9 Apr

The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Georgina Lawton on Growing up Black in a white family

———

For most of her life, Georgina Lawton was aware that she didn't look like her white family, but by her teens, she was no longer able to believe her parent's line that she was a genetic 'throwback' to a Black ancestor. In her memoir, Raceless, she writes about the painful process of forging a Black identity from scratch, and the painstaking work of repairing her relationship with her mother after years of denial.

Listen to the episode

Please note the transcript is automatically generated and may not be completely accurate.
Katherine May
Hello, I'm Katherine May and welcome to the wintering sessions, the podcast that sets out to learn from the times when life is frozen. This week I'm talking to Georgina Lawton, the writer whose memoir Raceless deals with the lasting impact of family secrets. For most of her life, Georgina Lawton was aware that she didn't look like her white family. But by her teens, she was no longer able to believe her parents line that she was to, quote, a genetic throwback to a black ancestor. In her memoir, raceless, she writes about the difficult process of forging a black identity from scratch, and the painstaking work of repairing her relationship with her mother, after years of denial.
Katherine May
Georgina Lawton, welcome. It's absolutely lovely to have you on the podcast. And I have been dreaming of inviting you on here for ages. Because in my other job as a literary Scout, I got to read the proposal for your book, like two years ago, maybe? Oh, my God. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, I flagged it to all our publishers then because I thought was just such an incredible story. And then was really pleased to see your book, that it delivered because it was just so wonderful. And that doesn't always follow necessarily. And so I was then, like, if I ever do a podcast, I'm definitely having her on. So I've been I've been hounding you. And I'm sorry.
Georgina Lawton
I'm glad we've got the time to book it in because yeah, everybody's at home now. So it's been sort of perfect timing for podcasts and interviews, isn't it? It really is,
Katherine May
it's made all the difference. And it does mean that you can just be a bit more bold about, you know, emailing people and going "do you fancy it"?
Georgina Lawton
I’ve made the most of internet friends, you know, like, I never thought I'd make so many sort of online friends. And I was always really wary of sort of like chatting to people on Twitter or like, making those connections sort of translate to an interview or something. But now it feels so much easier and so much more sort of expected. Online just doing not as much as they were before. So...
Katherine May
No, and people are actually generally I know we like all remember the people that are dreadful to us online, but 99.9 recurring percent of people are just absolutely lovely. Yeah, and just want to be nice to you
Georgina Lawton
Yeah true, especially other people in the industry, you know, that you sort of look at and you you see their work and follow their work. And I was like, why did I not, you know, congratulate that person before or reach out earlier, just with intimidation. But now everyone seems to be more, more accessible in a good way. But also, I guess.
Katherine May
it's like the early days of Twitter again, it really is. Everyone's accessible again. And I think there was a period when everyone kind of zipped up their cardigan, metaphorically speaking. And everyone's unzipped a bit again. It's quite nice.
Georgina Lawton
interesting. It sort of democratized online space a bit more this pandemic.
Katherine May
Yeah, and that's a that's like a that needed to happen. Yeah. Interesting year. So I would love to share with my listeners, your your amazing and really heart wrenching story, actually. I mean, I..please correct me if I phrase this wrong, but you grew up in sorry, to two white parents. But you were born black?
Georgina Lawton
Yes. Yeah.
Katherine May
And like, when did you? When did you start to notice that? Gosh,
Georgina Lawton
I would say my like moment of racial reckoning, I guess was that about five years old when I was at school. And I remember talking to another child and saying, Why is my skin this color. And I must have said something like, you know, I want to be your color. I remember the girl who's white. And we were scratching each other's skin. And she scratched mine. When you sort of scratch brown skin, it turns this kind of temporary, like ashy color and I wrote about this in the book. And I remember, I remember that scene distinctly. So I must have been Yeah, four or five. And I realized I didn't look like anybody else. But also that I wanted to look like, you know, my class. Yeah. My friends. And my family, I guess.
Katherine May
Yeah. And it was not acknowledged in your family that. I mean, did I suppose they acknowledge that you look different, but they had a story for that. Right?
Georgina Lawton
Yeah. So I would go home as a child and asked my parents repeatedly, you know, sort of, I guess, with increasing frequency, as I've got older and became more cynical, but you know, as a five year old, maybe that was the only time I asked that year, I can't remember. And then as I got older, and more people would ask questions on holiday and stuff, I would start to think Actually, no, this doesn't make sense. But as a child, you know, I'd ask every so often and then it would get forgotten about because we had an otherwise, you know, very happy sort of normal, benign middle class. Surrey, kind of upbring with my brother, so it wasn't, it wasn't always at the forefront of my mind. And my mum would also say, you know, we don't need to talk about that. Or you could have inherited your looks from an Irish throwback ancestor. She comes from the west coast of Ireland, and there's this sort of spurious part of Irish history where people say oh, you know, the west coast of Ireland was the gene pool was made darker because the ships from the Spanish Armada were wrecked off a place called Spanish point, which is actually near where my mum comes from in county, Clare. And there are lots of people with dark hair and pale skin. But I don't, I don't look like that. I'm black and visibly black. But that was the sort of story that anchored me into my mum's heritage and sort of excused or overlooked my blackness in a way. And that was the one we leaned on, but it's not actually historically accurate. That wasn't enough, people have sort of more ish image to sort of infiltrate, the Irish gene pool, it's not true.
Katherine May
I like for me, this is, um, this the heart of why your story is so incredible, because what it points to immediately is our inability to talk about race and blackness, and our, you know, our lack of kind of comfort in the UK, with being able to to name that, you know, it was seen as polite to not mention it and and politeness was really painful for you that that avoidance?
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, completely. I think it's really as you know, it's my family, first and foremost. But I do think our family unit is sort of a microcosm for some parts of the UK and how we just have to overlook race as a means of accepting it. And of course, that shouldn't be the case. But people sort of misbelieve that if we do talk about race, then racism will follow. So we shouldn't mention at all. And it's just better to be polite, and to just say nothing but that silence and that politeness can really stifle relationships and stifle again, the sense of self from from the child's or the person who's raised is being overlooked.
Katherine May
Yeah. Because while you were being brought up as a, as a white child, essentially, there were loads of parts of your experience that were that of a black child, people from the outside saw you as black, and talk to you about being black.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, of course. And, and I guess this word, these moments of these reminders that I was black would would, would happen with increasing frequency, as I said, as I got older, and I was like, sort of more interested in exploring other parts of London, other parts of the UK and stepping outside my comfort zone and stepping outside this sort of protective bubble of whiteness, which, you know, I was my family, like, my dad, and I were super close. And I wasn't, you know, unhappy in, in this situation I was born into, I just always had questions. And yet other people would point out as we went into South London, oh, you look mixed race, or you look like my friend, you look like, you know, Ethiopian or what's your mix? And I'd have all these questions, and I'd go home and they just weren't getting answered. It was just this consistent sort of stone walling when it comes to when it came to the issue of race. So, it was written at times and lonely at times as well, because I had so much love in my life from my parents. But then I also had this sort of denial of an essential part of me, I guess.
Katherine May
Yeah. And there was a moment in the book where your teacher came with the class register and asked you how you could possibly say you were white British?
Georgina Lawton
Gosh, yeah, I just..iv'e quizzed my mum about this. And you know, that when I went to secondary school, they marked me down on the school system, they put my ethnicity, whatever terminology you call it, for these school system sort of records, they'd marked me down as white and my parents had put them down as white. So then, you know, sort of it stands to reason that eventually, maybe somebody was gonna say, how come you are down as white doesn't make sense. So that my teachers methods were trash, because she called me out in front of the whole class. And it was like, embarrassing. But then she kind of did me a favour in away because she sped me up on that process of acceptance. And that, you know, she reminded me, I'm mixed race or I look black, or, you know, how other people are going to be, I'm still not going to be accepted into that exclusive category of whiteness, which is based around myths of purity, and you know, it's not going to accept me, so why try?
Katherine May
Yeah, I mean, like, I'm, I'm very definitely white, but my mom's side of the family. Everyone has kind of very black hair, and I've inherited the sort of very dark eyes. And so obviously, at some point in our ancestry, you know, we have, you know, some somewhere like got something from like, the far reaches of Europe or Asia or, you know, whatever, but nobody knows. But, I mean, we like we attract comments on like, weird sideways comments on it, you know, like touch of the tar brush. When I was a child, I remember hearing because my eyes were so dark. And it's like, on one hand, we're too polite to talk about it. And on the other hand, it kind of bursts out of people in weird offensive ways. They want you to know that you look different to them. And like my difference is so tiny, that you wouldn't think it was worth commenting on. But apparently people can't resist it.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. Yeah, I never, I never had, you know, derogatory comments from the people that love me. And that where in my life in my immediate circle, my family, my friends, but sort of, you know, even a few distant relatives over the years, there'd be little, not even comments about my parents, but comments about the appearance of other people that looked like me or thinly veiled racist remarks about crime ridden neighborhoods. And as a child, I'd look down at my skin and then look at the people on TV and think, Well, where do I fit in? Because I look like them. But nobody's acknowledging that in these spaces where, you know, I'm supposed to be loved and I'm supposed to be seen. So that was it was really isolating at times, because I could hear these remarks about people that, you know, strangers would would make to me, and I'd say, Well, this is what I look like. And they say, No, you're not really black. While you're, you know, you're one of our four know, your parents, or whatever. And it's like the lie. And the silence kind of went full circle, because we've been, we've been saying it for so long that then when other people made racist remarks, and I pulled them up on it, you know, our story would come back and hit me in the face because they say, Oh, you know, you don't count because your parents are white, or you've already said that you're not? And i'd be like well maybe I'm not then? and because people are making racist remarks in front of me so maybe I'm not really. So it was, yeah, it was really confusing as a child at times. , to be in those in those spaces of sort of the in between us.
Katherine May
And as you know, as a child and a teenager, those questions of identity are so like, painful in you. They're so everything they take take you over and feeling like an outsider, is not something you can cope with very well, when you're a child, I don't think
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, no, definitely every every every person has gone through those rituals of isolation as a teenager, whether it's after a break, sort of weight problems, or skin or whatever it is, like everybody can relate to that feeling of being on the outside at some point, I think, , With me it was it was all of those things, but they were sort of exacerbated because I was also black. And I was the only person that was black, that looked like me. And so of course, if I'd grown up in a black community, I would have had a perceived amount of privilege, because I'm mixed race and because my features speak to that, , because I was the only person that looked like me. You know, my entire year at school, I remember an infant school and you know, my church, in my family on both sides. So I was the only person. And so I was the blackest person there. So it wasn't sort of a privilege that I would, I would say even existed really, for me until I started to, you know, venture out pass my community. So yeah, it was definitely isolating at times.
Katherine May
Yeah. And you had an encounter with a hairdresser who said she couldn't cut your hair because it was afro hair.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, you know, that's what I mean when when we think about this, this sort of hierarchy of black hair. And hair like mine is also is often sort of awarded this, this sort of status of desirability because it's curly, it's not quite Afro, but in the white face is that I, I lived it and my hair was the most afro hair they'd ever seen. So of course, they couldn't deal with it. And so we got turned away. And I remember we just we just went to Croydon nearby. And, you know, we didn't discuss me my mum what that meant or why we were getting the bus to Croydon or why the white hair salon in Sutton had turned. We just didn't talk about it was just okay, right, we'll go find some dealers. And we went and we found a black. You know, my mum found black hair stylists, for me. But we never really spoke about why she was having to do that. Like, I don't remember having conversations about it, which looking back is so bizarre, but as a child, you just start to accept your, your your normal because you want to belong.
Katherine May
Yeah. So. So when did that begin to change? Because I, eventually you took a DNA test, but only when your dad was very poorly, actually.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, so all those questions I'd managed to kind of keep buried within me. But even I've looked at my actual old Facebook messages with friends the other day. And, you know, at 18, I was talking to them on Facebook chat about getting a DNA test. So it had been in my head, I think, from around 15/16 because I sort of had enough of all the questions. And, you know, we were meeting new people and meeting boys on nights out. And I'd always get asked about my racial mix, and I've never had, so I kind of got it in my head. I wanted to do it. And then yeah, when I was at uni, my dad got sick with cancer. And it was just sort of like my world and my childhood ended. And it was a really painful time. And it was really difficult to think about processing a DNA test result because he was so sick. And he was so concerned with looking after me and my mum and my brother and making sure we were going to be fine without him. He was just very practical and very stoic in his illness
Katherine May
Sorting out.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, it just yeah, it was really, really, really hard. So I spoke to him about it. And I ordered the DNA test. And I spoke to him about it when he was ill. And I remember him being in the living room and saying, Yeah, you can get the test done if you want, but I know that your mine?
Katherine May
Yeah. But that. I mean, your dad just sounds lovely. and sounds like, you know, he, he wanted you to be his daughter because he loved you. And it must have been really hard to assert that identity that meant that you were slightly more separate to him than than anyone wanted you to be.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, it was that it came from, you know, I've talked about having, you know, your race overlooks as a means to accept it. But I do think it largely came from a place of love and him not wanting to accept that we were different biologically, because then that would mean he'd have to accept that my mum had been unfaithful, which she was and he'd have to sort of learn to forgive her and learn to accept our difference. And he just wasn't able to do that. So I do think it came from a place of love and wanting to keep the family together. And the silence around my heritage. And my real parentage was the only way that my parents could, could keep the family together. By the sounds of it. You know, I've spoken to my mum at length, but it was really difficult for me to accept that because yeah, I just, I never got a chance to speak about it with my dad, because he passed away before it processed the DNA test results. And then I didn't get them processed until a year afterward. They're just sitting on my shelf for ages. . And then I decided to get it done. Yeah, just get just Yeah, get it over with.
Katherine May
Yeah. And, and still, your mum tried to deny that anything could be different for you. Even at that point,
Georgina Lawton
You know, we have the results. And she just didn't want to acknowledge that they were correct. She didn't want to go back to a part of her past that she'd kept locked up for, you know, 23 years. Which I understand. It was just really hard for me because I was in bits, I had these results. And I still wasn't able to kind of get the full story from her straightaway. So I had to get my brother to intervene. And we had to sit down with her. And then finally she spoke about, you know, having had a one night stand with a guy in in the pub in West London. And we would run there as when I was a child for a couple of years.
Katherine May
Yeah. And it was just a just a thing that happened and such huge consequences.
Katherine May
We'll be back with more from Georgina in a moment. But first I want to tell you about my online course wintering for writers, which is back online after a successful first run last summer. wintering for writers is designed to be a beautiful reflective process for writers who are currently struggling, as so many are in this pandemic year. If you're feeling blocked or losing hope it's packed with videos and thought provoking texts to help you rethink your practice. And there's an exclusive workbook to support your reflection. Best of all, you can work at your own pace and incomplete privacy as you write yourself back into your creative flow. To find out more, go to Katherine may.com, and click on courses or follow the link in the show notes. And now back to Georgina Lawton.
Katherine May
I mean, what I'd love to talk about is how you began to address this feeling of like dislocation and anime, you traveled First of all, I think, and that helped.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, big time. I was really fortunate to be able to do that, to have the money to do that. And I was sort of working remotely from my laptop doing writing for different sort of women's magazines. And I just knew that I had to get out of the community that I've grown up in, it had given me so much stability, but of course, after my dad passed away, I'd lost that, then I sort of lost our, our narrative to one another anyway, so I was sort of grieving twice or grieving, you know, doubly, and things weren't good with my mum, because we still weren't having honest discussions about everything. And I just thought, right, I'm gonna go, I want to go and I also want to sort of play catch up with a lot of the stuff I've missed out on as, as a young black woman I've missed out on Well, there's more, there's more in like a psychological thing I felt I'd missed out on a lot of opportunities. And I felt like I've been sort of living half a life so I wanted to go and live amongst black communities and just see myself reflected on a daily basis in the places that I lived.
Katherine May
And so where did you live you lived all over the world, didn't you? It sounds incredible.
Georgina Lawton
I went on a jaunt for like a year and a bit and so I went to Brooklyn first of all and I thought right I'm gonna get like a journalist visa and live this sort of like you know, girls life but with black character at the forefront like I was really hell bent on doing that, and I stayed for six months, I couldn't get the right visa. So I thought okay, right now I'm going to go and do some travel writing. So I got offered a press trip to Vietnam. So we got flown to Vietnam, and then after that, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna keep traveling, so I went to Nicaragua. Dominican Republic, Cuba. And then I came back to London and I got another press trip for South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Katherine May
And being a black person in a black majority country is a very different experience, I assume to being black in a white majority country.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, there were so many questions that got brought up in my mind as a black female Traveler with a British passport. So I can see myself reflected in places like the Dominican Republic I blended in so well, everybody thought I was Dominican, and also in Cuba. And that was a great privilege in a way to blend in like a local to pass as a local. But then with that also comes discrimination. Because you see how people with darker skin are treated in places like Cuba, you know, it seems,, there's such an egalitarian society. But as I put in the book, if you do a little bit of digging, it's white Cubans that all have bank accounts, because not everyone has bank accounts is white, keeping the own most of the property. And there's a lot of racism in these black majority countries, these beautiful places within the Diaspora that are so vibrant, and so, so enchanting. And to move through that, as a black woman was, was fascinating. And I feel really lucky that, you know, in a way, those are a part of a part of me, because as a black female, you can see yourself reflected in all these spaces. But then when you actually realize also that you will be discriminated against in a way that maybe isn't as bad at home because of the racial hierarchies that exist in these countries that are a lot worse because of the impact of colonialism because of the legacy of white supremacy. And because of the disparities between rich and poor, it's like, yeah, it was a constant sort of head bending experience
Katherine May
Massively complex,
Georgina Lawton
Yeah massively complex to pass as Cuban and Dominican. And then, you know, in the same moment, be refused entry to a bar or a club, because people think you'reCuban and Dominican so it's like that I'd have to speak English really loudly. And suddenly my privilege would get restored to me. It was just interesting to see constantly how all those different facets of my identity were intersecting, and how one would overshadow the other depending on how I dressed or what passport I had, or what language I spoke.
Katherine May
And I felt like what you learn about more than anyone else could do in a funny kind of way, is race itself and how its constructed. And what it means. Like I don't I don't think I've ever met anyone in a position to understand that through so many different facets and lenses.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I tried to put that down in the book, you know, my personal experience growing up sort of, as a black woman with a white cultural identity and a white family. That's, that's one perspective. But then as a traveling black woman in these black spaces, I think lots more people are writing about that now. We just see how blackness is constructed around the world. And I wouldn't go as far as to say, you know, race is fluid, because for a lot of people of colour, it's not fluid, it just speaks to, I guess, the flimsiness of our racial constructs and how they are different they are in each community that exists around the world within the diaspora, you know, being black in this country is not the same as being black in America, being black in America is not the same as being black in South Africa, for example, that racial categories change all the time. And the boundaries are always moved. And so it was interesting. Yeah, to see that play, and also to see how ethnicity and nationality and race and gender all intersect with someone like me.
Katherine May
And this and you know, the idea of like anyone being racially pure, on any level for any kind of, you know, identity or race is just so collapsible, particularly as soon as you start to look at DNA evidence and how mixed we all are ultimately, somewhere in our heritage.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Katherine May
But you found that you had quite a strong Nigerian heritage when you took your DNA test, I think,
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, so on the road, I partnered with the D.. well, the DNA company contacted me after they read some of my writing online, they said, We'd love to have your DNA test, we can film it in your next country, where are you going to be and I was in Mexico, I think and we filmed like a video of me talking about my story. And then they're given me this free test. I thought, Okay, great. I wonder what it will say. And then when I found out the results, I was in Nicaragua and it was weird, it was very weird moment opening it in Nicaragua, having not really spoken to my family about you know, my plans to take this test and then it coming back and saying I was basically 50% Nigerian, and I was like oh, okay, like, after all this, this this time sort of spent in in a weird kind of racial no man's land almost, or just not having an answer.
Katherine May
It's actually very specific in the end.
Georgina Lawton
And very sort of 50/50 split and I was sort of dreaming of having, you know, this like weird.
Katherine May
Everything. Women of the wold!
Georgina Lawton
From bits all over the world. and was literally 50/50. And I was like "Ah, okay, cool." And I've got lots of British Nigerian friends in London, and they're all just like hurray Welcome to the club.
Katherine May
But what does it mean to be Nigerian? If you've never been Nigerian, you know? That's like a whole other complex
Georgina Lawton
Exactly It feels really odd even sort of claiming it. If somebody asks where I'm from now I've got three or four different answers prepared based on how long we've got who they are. Because...
Katherine May
..how much energy you've got right now
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, because yeah, I can't sit here and talk about my Nigerian cultural heritage, because I don't have that. And maybe I never will. But I guess I can speak to those DNA test results, because it's such a big split. And on a continental level, they're quite accurate. It's likely also that I, you know, I found a black relative through the site, but she's quite distant relative. So I couldn't really match with anyone closer, but she was Nigerian. And we met up and I put that in the book. And that was a really cool moment to just see another black face. That was also a relative of mine. I'd never had that before. But she was Nigerian so spoke to an expert. And they said, Oh, is likely then that your biological parent is Nigerian. And if you've got these two links, it's likely and I was like, Okay, cool. I can accept it. But it's still in a way doesn't feel real. because I don't know anything about Nigerian culture through sort of, you know, family osmosis, as most people get their cultural identity, you know?
Katherine May
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There's, there's little fragments of stuff that come from food and storytelling and turns of phrase.
Georgina Lawton
Do you miss it? Or do you wish you had it not that you can't miss something that you've never had? Like, I don't know what I've lost. Because I had quite a full upbringing. It just wasn't the one that people assume matches my skin color or my appearance, you know, I mean, but I I'd love to find out more about my Nigerian side, I'd love to find out more about that family that probably doesn't know I exist.
Katherine May
And yeah, because you've never you've never tracked down your biological father.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, No, I haven't. I mean, I keep my DNA in these in these sites. But I haven't found a closer relative, I haven't found him and I, I don't really know where to go, because I don't have a close enough match to even sort of like, triangulate all these reference points. So yeah,
Katherine May
it's like a, there's an open possibility for the future there
Georgina Lawton
is but you know, if it never happened, I wouldn't be I wouldn't be devastated if I had such a great father. And I had a great cultural upbringing, in what I know, I never felt like I missed out or much growing up in terms of like, cultural identity, because I just, again, I didn't know what I was what I was missing. So it's hard to sort of align myself.
Katherine May
It's not like you're culture-less is it? You've got a culture, it's just not the culture that people expect you to have. Maybe it's it's Yeah,
Georgina Lawton
I think having spoken to a lot of my you know, British Nigerian friends, it's sort of a similar, a similar issue because they're black, and they're British, but they're second or third generation. So you obviously you feel that loss, maybe more easily when your parent is actually from one country. And you're, you're maybe not able to speak the language as well, or you're not able to uphold the traditions in the same way, because you were born in Britain. So anyone that's born in Britain, that has, you know, parents from another country, I think they kind of can speak to that experience a little bit as well. Definitely like similarities. Yeah. Except they've always sort of known what they are. And I've always had questions, but it's similar in some ways, I think.
Katherine May
Absolutely. So, to close the story, I guess. You and your mom did some work in the end, didn't you? I mean, I think one of the things that comes across you from your book is like the power of really good therapy to make things to set things straight again.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, yeah, therapies amazing. Again, I feel really lucky that I had money to see a therapist once a week, I found a black female therapist in South London. And that was really powerful to have conversations about things I'd never been able to find the language for. And, you know, having her talk about experiences like mine with with other people she know she's saying there's a lot of similarities between you and some of her clients who were adopted. Or they were Yeah, there was a lot to talk about her. And I found that really, really liberating. And then my mum found a therapist for me and her also in South London, who was a white lady called Justine, who was amazing. And she really helped me my mum hear each other.
Katherine May
Yeah. And it sounds like, you know, there was there was grunt work to do. It was not straight. You know, it wasn't like a straightforward. You sat down in front of a therapist, and everything flowed out. It sounded long and hard. But you know, you won in the end between between you.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, it was it was arduous, painful awkward, like frustrating at first because my mum doesn't talk as much as me and she got used, obviously, not talking about this thing at the heart of our family. And I'd always have to do all the explaining and all the questioning. So I was very angry at first because I'd said you've you've no idea what you've put me through. I've had to keep defending our family defending you. When people made jokes about, you know, my mum and the postman. I'd heard it all by this point. And I had to do a lot of sort of forgiving, I guess, and also just a lot of work on myself. And I was quite angry at my mum for that at the beginning. And then by the end, you know, we stuck at it for two years, maybe two and a half every week. And by the end, it was like, so much of that anger just evaporated and my mum was so much more open and so much more able to hear me and understand
Katherine May
I so admire you both for sticking with that. That must have been so hard to stick with that for two and a half years. That's, That's an incredible piece of work to do.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, it is. It was hard. It was really hard. There was times when I'd walk out, or she'd walk out or somebody would feel, you know, affronted at something, someone else's. And they'd be screaming, it was really hard, painful work. And even in the book, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't replicate all those moments, because it's so painful to even go back on because it's like, you know, it's like my mum , I didn't, I didn't want to cut my mum out. I'd already lost my dad. I wasn't about to ostracize myself from my family. But it was it was a long old road as my mum says.
Katherine May
Yeah. And your therapist must have had a great time!
Georgina Lawton
I think we where her best clients, I thnk she was fascinated by it. But she was also I found out she was so good at helping each other, helping me my mum hear each other. And I found out at the end that she actually had mixed race children herself. And I think that really brought to the experience having I was quite suspicious. She's a white woman, she's not going to get all of this, I'm gonna have her my mum gang up on me. But it was really she was just she just struck the correct balance of both of us all times. And then I found out, she has a bit of personal experience that she brought to it as well. But I didn't feel that it was just sort of a suspicion that I was I was correct.
Katherine May
It's amazing. And so so how are things now, I mean, like I, you know, your mum sounds wonderful. Just someone that got stuck for a while.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, she got stuck for a long time, I think in her own head.
Katherine May
Maybe a while was a bit of an understatement
Georgina Lawton
Yeah years, like two decades. But she was allowed, you know, it was her, my dad, they, I guess, silently conspired to raise me and my brother, you know, the same way. But they both adopted this silence, and my dad just never challenged her and my mum, she wasn't forthcoming. Once she knew that she, she didn't have to speak about it. So yeah, she's a lot more open now, which is great, and a lot more able to kind of talk about about race and identity without necessarily looping back to me. And you know, us really living something really painful. It doesn't erupt into arguments. And if I want to say something to my mum, and I feel like I've gone through something, or I've got story, she'll just listen. And she'll be able to offer some support, which before I do that, because I think she's worried about the story coming out. So we'd never really discussed anything to do with to do with race, as the therapist said, that kept us separate from one another. So it's, it's good that we've now I think, become a bit close with
Katherine May
A common language. And actually, I mean, your mum's gone on a journey that loads of white people have gone on over the last couple of years, you know, like, we as a society are hopefully learning to speak about this better, and to have some language that's no longer offensive, but which is also like a bit more Frank and a bit less illusory, and kind of embarrassed about the whole thing.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, for sure. And I hope, you know, raceless, my book will help inspire some of those difficult conversations. Because as as, as we're mixing more as a society, and as you know, we're having relationships, close relationships with people that are of a different cultural or ethnic background to us, we need to like have honest, nuanced discussions about privilege and difference and love and discrimination. And we need to have them without erupting or without, you know, there being, you know, parts of the conversation that are overlooked or silenced.
Katherine May
And pretending we don't see color does not help.
Georgina Lawton
No, yeah, I guess I get quite a few messages from people, I need to talk to my child or my, you know, partner about race, how should I do it, and I'm like, God, I don't have kids. And I don't know what to advise. If you buy the book that maybe that will give you some, some insights. But it's so hard to speak to other people's experiences, I can only, you know, discuss what I've done and what worked for me,
Katherine May
But oh, my God, kids can handle so much more than we expect them to, like, you just talk directly to kids about stuff and they absorb it. Like they don't carry the baggage that we carry of, you know, you know, like loads of people my age, I'm 43 getting old. But you know, like we were raised to say that we don't see color. Like that was the that was the polite thing to say when I was a kid. And that was like that, you know, that would have been perceived as right on and that it takes us a while to U turn from, you know, realizing that we thought we were being really good all the time. And oh, no, sorry. Actually, it's quite offensive. I mean, kids just don't carry that baggage. We can we can start all over again with them. And that's great.
Georgina Lawton
Yeah, I definitely you know, having spoke to my mum and getting that insight into her mind and what it was like for her growing up in the 60s and 70s. I can see how it was just a completely different approach to race and how many people of that generation You know, they're playing catch up in a away, I guess to what's going on now, which is a real sort of open dialogue around all aspects of identity and underrepresented voices, like we're so much more attuned to that lack. that lack of voice now. So it's great to be in that in that position. And great to be a writer in these times, I think
Katherine May
Oh, and we're glad to have you. I mean, I think that your book will help so many people to understand a little bit better to really unpick the issues. And I think it's also just an amazing testament to the power of having really difficult conversations and how it's worth it in the end, so I can't wait for everyone to read it all.
Georgina Lawton
Oh Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Katherine May
Georgina, thank you so much. It's been amazing to talk to you.
Katherine May
And that's all from us today. Thank you so much to Georgina Lawton for sharing her story with us. Raceless is available in all good bookstores, and you can follow Georgina on Instagram or Twitter links in the show notes. I'll be back next week with another brilliant writer who is intimate with winter. Thanks for listening.

Show Notes

This week Katherine chats to Georgina Lawton, author of 'Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity, and the Truth About Where I Belong'.

A really lovely chat which branches out onto areas including her Surrey upbringing, the sense of confusion in her early years, the experience of receiving racial comments more often as she grew up, finding friend groups, her amazing perspective shifts through travel, and her strategies in breaking down her racial origins - she has developed numerous versions depending on the situation. A fascinating look at family, friends and society.

Georgina Lawton is a 'twentysomething' journalist and speaker. A former Guardian Weekend columnist, she is now a freelancer contributor for the paper, and also writes for a number of other publications such as: The Independent, Stylist, gal-dem, Travel + Leisure, VICE, Time Out London and more. She is also a broadcaster and host of the Audible podcast The Secrets In Us.